2025 Polio Vaccination: Bauchi, UNICEF Target 556,000 Children With 2.5m Doses Of Vaccines

From Paul Orude Bauchi

Bauchí State Government in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is set to vaccinate no fewer than 556,000 unvaccinated children in the state in the 2025 nationwide Polio Vaccination campaign slated for April 24.

UNICEF, with the Federal Government and other partners, is supporting the campaign in Bauchi with 2.5m doses of polio vaccines to ensure that  every unvaccinated child in the state is saved from possible illness 

Chief of Bauchi Field Office of UNICEF, Dr Nuzhat Rafique, disclosed that this year’s campaign would commence in the 13  zero dose Local Government Areas out of the 20 LGAs in the state.

Rafique disclosed this at the Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University Teaching Hospital (ATBUTH), Bauchi, on Thursday, while handing over the polio vaccines to the State Government  preparatory to the campaign.

She stated that the campaign would commence in the 13 zero dose LGAs on 24th while proceeding to the entire State on 26th to 29th of April.

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campaigns this year are the last chance for Nigeria and for Bauchi to contribute towards the eradication of Polio in Nigeria,” she emphasised.  

“Bauchi is one of the zero dose states with 13 out of 20 LGAs with zero dose children which  comprises over 556,000 children who have never received any vaccination, so you can imagine how highly risky they are.

“So, we have mapped out these LGAs and we are starting there from the 24t. I requested you to give this massive report, let all communities in Bauchi State know that this is the month for the Polio campaign”

She called on stakeholders in  communities to cooperate and mobilise resources to proceed to vaccination centres to get their children vaccinated. 

“This is not only for them, but for the generations to come, for the whole future of Nigeria and the children born in Nigeria. If we are polio free, they will be much better citizens in sha Allah,” she states.

“Especially for this campaign, UNICEF is collaborating with the Primary Healthcare Development Board and Her Excellency, the First Lady, we always have this campaign in Bauchi State and we hope that this time around too, it will be successful in sha Allah.

“The primary healthcare board has taken delivery of the vaccine which we supported in bringing in a total of 2.5m doses of Polio vaccine already here in the cold room, then we have more than 50,000 of drops, we have 25,000 pen markers to be used for marking fingers of children vaccinated.”

Rafique urged the media to take responsibility of spreading the message to communities  across the state to reach all unvaccinated  children in the campaign to know how many children were vaccinated.

“Every child under the age of five is a target for the campaign but in those 556,000 children who are zero dose, we are hoping that after now, there will not be zero dose in Bauchi again,” she explained 

 “It is not only Polio for them, it is all the vaccine packages that need to reach them and once Polio reaches them and they start getting immunized, in sha Allah we will reduce the number of zero dose children.”

In a remark,  UNICEF Health Officer, Patrick Akor, explained that no fewer than 160,250 doses would  be used for the round of vaccination to reach children between ages 0 – 59 months. 

Akor assured that UNICEF has provided pen markers that would be used to finger mark the children already vaccinated for proper and adequate data collection.

“We are going to ensure that in all the local governments, all teams have adequate vaccines during the implementation exercise,” he assured.

Also in a remark, Bappah Jika, a representative of the Bauchi state Primary Healthcare Development Board, appreciated the support of  the doses of polio vaccines from UNICEF.

Jika assured that adequate publicity would be embarked upon to create awareness for the campaign so that the target will be achieved.